Selling your products is one of the best ways to make a passive income from your WordPress website. Best of all, unlike other monetization tactics such as affiliate marketing and selling ads, you don’t necessarily need a huge traffic base for earning a decent income by selling products.

You can nurture your existing email list and entice them to purchase products on your website. With that said, it doesn’t mean selling is easy. But it is totally possible to create a stable income by rolling out an eCommerce store and start selling to your customers.

In your store, you may either sell digital goods like ebooks that are easier to create or sell physical products for more profit. Either way, with the right strategies, selling on your WordPress website shouldn’t be a tedious task.

Let’s take a look at a few things you’ll need to know before rolling out your first eCommerce store.

#1. eCommerce platform- Should you roll out a Storefront on WordPress?

There are tons of eCommerce platforms out there, so before jumping in to create a WordPress storefront, it is better to take a look at the different choices available.

In fact, 60% of medium to large store owners agree that they should have conducted better due diligence before picking the platform.

Undoubtedly, deciding on eCommerce platform can make or break your business. This is because once you chose a wrong platform, it is too hard to back out from your original decision

Review other popular eCommerce platforms:

According to Datanyze, besides WooCommerce plugin, Shopify and Magneto are the eCommerce platforms of choice amongst Alexa 1M sites. Before choosing WordPress for your store, make a head-to-head comparison between Shopify and Magento with WordPress.

This will help you figure out the benefits and drawbacks of WordPress with each platform. Best of all, this strategy of reviewing other platforms will likely reduce the disappointment down the line.

#2. You Need an Advanced email Marketing and Automation tool

If you’re blogging for a while, chances are you’ll be aware of various list building tools such as Madmimi.

Both these tools are perfect for sending automated emails and doing some basic segmentation on your list. But if you’re growing an eCommerce store, you’ll need a much more reliable email marketing tool that is more scalable and robust than these basic tools.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution for your marketing automation needs for your store, InfusionSoft could be an excellent choice.

It is true that InfusionSoft pricing is higher comparing with other essential tools. However, in the long run using a premium tool like InfusionSoft will be way too profitable because you’ll not need another marketing automation tool for your storefront.

Some of the advanced email marketing tasks you can do with InfusionSoft are listed below:-

List segmentation:- It is the process of classifying your leads into a distinct group based on various demographics such as user preferences, geographical location, on-site behaviors, etc.

Email Personalization:- One of the benefits of list segmentation is that it lets you send personalized emails targeted to each distinct group. When comparing to untargeted promotional emails, personalized emails are proven to bring in more sales and revenue to your table.

Tags:- Regardless of the size of your list, applying a tag on emails based on a particular activity will help you identify each of the emails easily. Here are some examples of using tags on eCommerce site: bought [product], downloaded [an ebook from content upgrade], attended [a webinar]. Nevertheless, tagging based on an activity helps you to personalize your future emails.

#3. Choosing the Right WordPress Plugin

Needless to say, WooCommerce is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugins.

For instance, if you’re looking to create a storefront to sell digital products only such as ebooks, using WooCommerce might not be the right choice. This is because WooCommerce is primarily built for starting an eCommerce store in which shipping is required. Since digital storefront doesn’t need shipping requirement, you’ll find lots of unwanted built-in features in WooCommerce.

You’ll likely need to skip many unwanted options if you’re creating a digital storefront with WooCommerce.

In such a case, an excellent alternative plugin to choose is Easy Digital Downloads. Because EDD is built specifically for selling digital goods, you’ll find it much easier and useful comparing with Woocommerce plugin.

Tip:- If you’re building an eCommerce store in which shipping is required use WooCommerce plugin. If you’re looking to build a digital storefront, Easy Digital Downloads could be an excellent choice.

When creating a WordPress based eCommerce site, probably one of the first questions you’ll be asking is –should you create a dedicated store or integrate it with your existing WordPress blog?

If you’re looking to roll out ‘the next big eCommerce thing’ in your niche market, you might want to create a dedicated eCommerce store. You’ll need to work as a startup instead of growing your site just like growing a blog.

In that case, you’ll need to put in lots of hours on building a reliable brand from scratch and acquiring the user base. However, if you already have an established website, you can easily integrate a storefront with it.

If you’re looking for inspiration for integrating a storefront with an established blog, Nautil.us is a perfect example.

Because they update posts on a regular basis, the blog attracts lots of organic visitors. When it comes to acquiring customers, their primary strategy is to encourage their blog visitors to purchase merchandise that mirrors the type of content they love.

Tip:- If you’re creating a new eCommerce startup, create a website that is dedicated to selling goods. However, if you’re looking to leverage your existing website’s audience to grow your store, you may need to integrate the store with your current site.

I hope this article gives you some insights on starting an eCommerce store with WordPress. Would you like to add more points? Feel free to share your thoughts with us by dropping a line below.